


1Q8V

by eggobang



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/M, Gen, found this in my Gdrive and i want it OUT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:13:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26416996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggobang/pseuds/eggobang
Summary: Quiet acclimates to Mother Base.
Relationships: Quiet/Venom Snake
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	1Q8V

She has a lot of time to think. Mostly, she thinks about herself--or what little is left of the being now called “Quiet.” The excision of personhood that accompanied the remaking of her body and its colonization by the parasites. She is only a body, and a weapon, and the two are inseparable from each other. Quiet assumes that Big Boss, Venom Snake, sees her that way, too: feral, vulnerable in her near-nakedness and wary movements, dumbly inscrutable in her silence. Snake must like the silence, though. He visits her cell frequently. He always looks furtive, hunched over like he can’t quite shake the urge to be stealthy from his body. Today he has brought his dog, which settles warily on the floor as he leans against the bars of her cell, and pulls out a cigar, lighting it with the air of a businessman come home from a long day of work. The parody of domesticity amuses her--the patriarch, the loyal hound, the caged woman. She doesn’t get up from her cot to greet him. Leave it to Miller and Ocelot to play house with this man who wears warfare on his body, makes a home from it. 

Her first mission out with Snake makes her feel like a dog let off its leash. Touching down in central Africa would make her cry, if she still could. Lush green jungle, clear bright sunshine, cool still water after the desert of Afghanistan and the metal and monotony of Mother Base. For once, the physicality of existing isn’t an onus. Clouds of dust erupting as she jumps from place to place, the sprays of blood from a downed enemy, the indentation on the ground where she lay motionless, waiting for Snake’s command, letting the sunlight seep into her bare back like a second skin. I was here. I did this. The subtle indices of her existence. Everything in the world narrows down to the barrel of a gun, a faint breeze, the sun’s warmth on her exposed skin. Quiet hums into the radio, unprompted. Through her rifle’s scope she sees Snake pause, his arm locked in a stranglehold around a PF soldier’s neck. He casually slits the soldier’s throat and lets the limp body ragdoll into the dust. Sated, she moves out of the sun. 

Snake clambers down the stairs into her cell after their first excursion. On the helicopter back to Mother Base he had looked almost proud, his usual blank stare tinged with a paternalism she’d only previously seen directed at his men. It grated on her nerves then but now, fresh from a shower and curiously lacking the controlled and detached ferocity he’d displayed on the field, he seems almost needy. He wants his men to like him; he wants her to trust him. Their trust is implicit, hers needs to be earned. The emotional constipation of a man programmed to hyper-prioritize the physical. His language is haptic, primal, direct, taking shape in the shoves and punches directed at his men. He treats her the way he treats the dangerous animals on Mother Base’s conservation platform--with wariness, but also with the respect borne between two violent animals. She understands that the bars are there to keep others away, not shut her in, and thinks that now maybe he does, too.


End file.
